None of them, it is worth pointing out, has ever fully embraced the term "minimalism", and the seeds of how differently the minimalist impulse would be taken up by later composers are already there in the huge aesthetic and temperamental gulfs that separate Riley's music from Reich's, or Glass's from Young's.

For those directly affected it can spur nearly superhuman levels of heroism or drive people otherwise separated by the gulfs of class and race into a peculiar but necessary and oddly beautiful teamwork.

It is the loss everyone feels as soon as they are done growing and begin living as adults, either suddenly responsible or old enough to realize not only what is, but also what could be and the unbridgeable gulfs that lie between the two.